I borrowed the title for this post from a chapter in Burke Davis' seminal biography of Robert E. Lee, The Gray Fox, because I think that with his choice of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin to be the Vice Presidential Nominee, he has been bold, forceful,and audacious.
It is the entire opposite of the choice Barack Obama made a week ago. But it is a choice that is fraught with risk and rich with reward.
There is no doubt in my mind that the Libtard War Machine will try to "Quayle" Sarah Palin. In fact, they have already started. A number of "attack" websites are already cropping up, and mysteriously, they reside on the same server as obamadefense.com. They will aggressively claim that she is bereft of experience. And this too, they have already started -- disparaging her service as a mayor and Governor of Alaska.
And they will have the backing of the mainstream media -- CBS/ABC/NBC/MSNBC/NYTIMES -- who are so far in the bag for the OBiden ticket that we will undoubtedly see Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews fighting over who gets to fellate the Senators first.
Luckily, she was not mentored by criminally unrepetant terrorists and admirers of Charles Manson.
Sarah Palin is an incredibly audacious pick. She represents a dagger at the heart of the OBiden ticket's claim to represent change. Sarah Palin has fought corruption in her own political party, something neither Biden nor Obama can even claim to have stood up against.
She has worked at the 'pointy end of the spear' of government: actually having to make decisions and carry them out. Unlike legislators, who can pass bad laws while hoping for the best, mayors and governors actually do have to do thinks like snow removal, disaster recovery, collect garbage, keep schools open, and so on.
She represents the new breed of "soccer mom": hard-working and successful career woman with a family (and a large one at that) undaunted by the complaints of the glass ceiling and the old boys club. She's run private a commercial fishing operation with her husband, something that any fan of the Discovery Channel's show Deadliest Catch will appreciate and admire. She understands the needs, challenges, and travails of America's working families -- and working moms -- far better than a Hospital VP of Community Relations pulling down three hundred thousand bills a year.
Sarah Palin is bright and intelligent (two different traits, actually), quick on her feet, undaunted by the celebrity of the press without being arrogant or aloof. She understands energy and oil -- probably the second greatest issue our nation faces at this very moment. As Governor of Alaska, she has responsibility and authority over the nation's single largest private-public energy partnership that preserves Alaska's beauty and majesty while providing well over $1200 in direct cash payments to every man, woman, and child in Alaska every year.
She is an avid lover of the outdoors: a hunter, a fisher, and a life-long member of the National Rifle Association, she is every single NASCAR fan's ideal girlfriend. And there are a lot more NASCAR fans in this country that vote than the 18 million votes that Barack won to get nominated.
And it doesn't hurt that she easily fits in the category of "Hot Mom".
It is true that her resume is not filled with years of government experience. But that works to an advantage for McCain. No less than Barack Obama himself said (in his acceptance speech) that change doesn't come from Washington, it comes to Washington.
This is a woman that almost single-handedly took out the careers of former Senator Frank Murkowski, indicted Senator Ted Stevens, and Alaska Representative Don Young. These are easily the "Pep Boys" of earmarks in the Republican Party.
Barack Obama picked a man for his Veep who has spent nearly his entire career in the United States Senate, who has "played the game", bought the earmarks, slandered good judicial nominees. Not much change there, eh?
If we start to lay out the issues, we find a woman who is strongly pro-life, fiscally conservative, enthusiastically pro-American. A woman who lives in a state where, quite frankly, the pioneer lifestyle is still alive and well. She lives in a state where every citizen makes thousands of dollars a year from an oil industry that Joe Biden voted against in the 1970s.
Where Barack Obama refuses to defend the life of infants born during an abortion procedure, she cherished her own child -- diagnosed with Down's Syndrome -- and brought him into the world to show us all the hope, the joy, the grace, and the love of such a decision. Where Obama and Biden enthusiastically support the right of selective abortion based on disease and sex selection, she went against the current -- a 90% current in the case of Down's -- to show the courage to love her child. She is a hero to me.
She understands that America must become energy independent, and she knows what has to be done to do that. The Alaskan Oil Pipeline from Prudhoe Bay to Valdeez is a shining example of what can happen when companies drill responsibly and government gives them the breathing room to do it. And she understands the value of the public-private partnership to the citizens of Alaska, and I'll bet she has some ideas how to bring that to every citizen of the United States as we further open our resources.
Is she weak in foreign policy? Probably, yes. But 35 years sitting on a legislative committee charged with foreign policy no more makes Joe Biden an expert than eating scrapple makes me a hog farmer. I welcome a debate on Joe Biden's qualifications, so that we can expose how wrong he was on the Persian Gulf War, the Iraq war, the bombing of Libya, the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Panama Canal Treaty, and so on. If Sarah Palin believes as I do -- that the President makes policy, the State Department executes it, and that our foreign policy should be leveraged for our interests, and not the world's -- she will do just fine.
Let's also not forget that as Governor of Alaska, she is the commander-in-chief of the Alaskan National Guard. And while Libtards seem to have little respect for National Guard Service -- despite the fact that over 1/2 of the Armed Forces of the United States are Guard or Reserve -- the fact remains that neither Barack nor Slo Joe have commaned so much as a Brownie Troop in cookie sales.
Sarah Palin is an audacious pick. Her place on the ticket can be seen as a "fusion" pick -- fusing middle class, conservatives, working women, moms -- that could very well put the entire set of swing states in play. Will she help in notoriously Libtard states like California, Oregon, Wisconsin, and New York? Probably not. But the rust belt is now back in play in full force. And where rural Pennsylvania men -- you know, the ones who cling to Gods and Guns in Obama's world -- would probably not vote for liberal woman, a woman voter who can clean a rifle or field dress a caribou will win many more votes than spit and polish Mitt Romney.
The Libtard War Machine will have to be careful of going after a woman candidate for fear of the blowback. If the mainstream media -- again, fully in the pocket of the Democrat Party -- is seen as beating up on her, it will be more than the PUMAS that start abandoning their annointed one.
It's a smart, calculated pick -- as good VP picks should be. It's bold, and it's audacious.
All that remains is whether John McCain has the juice to exploit his own great move.